


rest and recreation

by 18305632



Series: leap forward, fall back [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Feels, How Do I Tag, Multi, POV Outsider, Period-Typical Homophobia, Vietnam War, actually more happy than it sounds, yeehaw gang its time for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 06:31:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/18305632/pseuds/18305632
Summary: Ray knows the world isn’t safe for people like them. He wonders, for the first time, why that is.Or, Klaus's time in the war, from the perspective of one of Klaus' squad members.





	rest and recreation

**Author's Note:**

> you don't have to read the rest of this series for this to make sense! i have a mild obsession with outsider pov, and its one am, and i haven't done any homework, but i couldn't leave this alone. this is the exact thought process i had while writing this, by the way:  
> Me: write about the boys!  
> Me to me: write about period-typical homophobia and from an outside character’s POV for no reason
> 
> title from rest and recreation, from one of my favorite new musicals hunchback of notre dame!! whether or not you like or even saw the original disney, this has alan menken and stephen schwartz. need i say more? the score alone makes me cry

Ray honestly isn’t sure who the new guy _is_. Dave tells him his name is Klaus when he asks, which answers absolutely none of his questions. He doesn’t press it, though: Dave’s been tighter than a mouse trap about everything back home, and Ray doubts he’ll glean any information on this subject, either. But he’d have to be blind not to notice how close the two are: they’re practically attached at the hip, always touching, always laughing and chatting, familiar as brothers.

It’s in light of this that Ray thinks to extend Friday night’s invitation to Klaus. He figures, on some level, that Dave would probably do it anyways, but he wants Klaus to know he’s one of them: he’s bled on the field and sat through Sarg’s yammering about honor, he’s family, blood or no.

He expects a _yes_. He expects Klaus to leap up with the strange excitement he has for the oddest of things (who the hell laughs that hard at toilets, for Chrissake?).

Instead, he gets this:

“Hey, Klaus, we’re goin’ to the bar.”

“You have a _bar_?”

“We have a-- Christ, Klaus, you think we own the damn thing?”

“No, no, but, you have one _out here_?”

“You come all the way to Vietnam without knowing if there’s a _bar_?”

“Well, I didn’t come here on _purpose,_ Ray.”

“You comin’ or not?”

“Well, golly-gee, I don’t see why _not_.”

And that was that. Ray doesn’t have time to ask why Klaus is talking like one of those cartoon mice Roxie’s such a fan of, because Klaus is up on his feet and Ray thinks even God couldn’t get a hurricane like that to stop in its tracks.

“Bill!” he shouts, grabbing the shirt Glenn had kindly lent him a few months back (on account of the two of them being the twiggiest kids Ray’s ever seen in his life) and pulling it on over his head. It’s horrid. Glenn had been real big on the whole flower-power scene before being drafted, and as a result, his clothes were either from free-stores he’d frequented in the Haight-Ashbury district back home or equally unappealing tye-dye. The shirt Klaus is wearing, Ray thinks, is both. “ _Bill!_ ” Klaus repeats, and Ray is helpless to do anything but follow him out. “C’mon, show me where the goods are.”

Bill grins lecherously, wiggling his eyebrows as he pulls on an unbuttoned overshirt. “The ladies say they’re right here.”

“Yeah, right,” Kenny snorts, rolling out of his bunk beside them and his magazine onto Glenn, who mumbles something in his sleep and turns over. “If you’re looking for whores, they’re at the bar. If you’re looking for the bar, it’s with the whores.”

Klaus wrinkles his nose. “Poor word choice _and_ directions, oh-for-two.”

_Help me_ , Ray mouths to Lyle, who’s just walked in.

“What if,” Lyle graciously complies, “we wake up Glenn, and all walk over together?” Ray is nodding vigorously before he can even finish: he knows they usually do that anyway, but he loves the idea of actually getting out of the tent before sunrise. “Bill, mind finding Dave and letting him know we’re leaving?”

“Nah, I’m skipping out on this one; Walt and I are gonna go explore the town, y’know? Find some new joints,” Bill says, shaking his head. “Glenn can get him once he’s up though.”

“Aw, hell,” Kenny groans. “We really gotta drag along the hippie?” Kenny and Glenn fight so often Ray worries he won’t be able to go to sleep back in the States without it, but despite their bickering, they’re thick as thieves when it comes to these outings. Kenny’d rather drink alone than admit it, though, so they let him have this. Instead, Ray walks over to Glenn and prods at him until he opens his eyes, at which point Kenny pushes him off the bed and a scuffle ensues.

Sometimes, Ray aches at how young those two are. Kenny’d enlisted right out of high school, and Glenn had been drafted at the same time: Kenny’s only a bit over the drinking age, and Glenn just passed nineteen a few months ago. He knows the rest of them aren’t older but by a few years, but it still doesn’t sit right with him. He hopes to never see another war like this one, taking so many young lives before they have even a fighting chance. He knows it’s the kind of thought Kenny would flip over, but he can’t help it. This war’s wearing his patriotism thin.

Everyone gathers by the entrance, Dave jogging over from God knows where when he sees them collecting and Klaus being dragged towards him like a magnet as they begin their trek towards the bar. Lyle’s going on about some new issue of a comic someone else in their squadron managed to find, and Bill hums along, long used to these ramblings.

 

They end up at the same table they’re always at, and before he knows it, everyone is absolutely too sloshed to even consider debating about the war. Klaus had flagged down a rent girl about an hour ago who’d introduced herself as Nghia and bet her five bucks (and where, exactly, is Klaus getting that kind of money to throw around?) that he could speak more Vietnamese than she could. He, wonder of wonders, lost fantastically, but paid up, and Nghia found it funny enough to stick around.

She’s just told a particularly lewd joke that had Glenn choking on his... sixth? Seventh? On another shot of whiskey, and Ray looks up to tell Klaus they could just replace him with her only to find him and Dave missing.

Now, Ray is decidedly more sober than the rest of them, but he’s not so sober that he can let a comment like that go. As such, he hauls himself out of his seat gracelessly and walks to the back room, intent on finding either one of them and telling his brilliant joke.

What he sees instead is the two of them pressed up against the wall, hands up each other's shirts, smashing their faces together like the world depends on it in a way that makes it very clear that their affection is not exactly platonic.

And he flees.

 

It’s been a few days, and Ray’s been avoiding both of them. Well, as much as he can avoid someone who sleeps within ten feet of him. Still, he’s been-- cold, he guesses. He just doesn’t know what to _do_ _._ He knows what Julie would say to him: she’d say, _Raymond, these are your_ friends _, if there was something that put you off them you would’ve felt it long ago_. But Julie’s sweet, and accepting, and sometimes Ray thinks she’d walk up to a man robbing a bank and tell him God loves him, same as her. And Ray would call her crazy, and that man would probably walk out of the bank and join their church come Sunday. Julie’s not _here,_  though, and he can’t seem to find that same acceptance in himself without her.

Ray knows the world isn’t safe for people like them. He wonders, for the first time, why that is-- thinks of his little Roxie, and imagines telling her she can’t love who she does. He thinks of Julianne, the most wonderful, perfect woman, mother, and wife, and the tenderness he sees in Dave’s eyes when Klaus both is and isn’t looking, and he knows it’s the same love he has for Julianne. Why is it, he wonders, that their affection is shut behind doors and in back rooms, when he can (and, to the loud complaints of his friends back in school, frequently does-- did) run up to his Julianne, pick her up and spin her round and kiss her soundly until he forgets the time apart, right in the middle of the train station?

He remembers the coos that surrounded him when he’d done that very thing before being deployed, remembers the good-natured gagging of his younger brother (Danny was too young for the draft, then, only fifteen; Ray hopes to God in Heaven that this war will end before Danny has to join), and he imagines, for a moment, Dave and Klaus doing the same thing.

There was a kid in his high school who had the same… tendencies. He was a skittish boy, but no one really bothered him too much: he had a few good friends, a guy on the football team hung around him a lot, and as cruel as high school was, Ray’s was kinder than most. At least, until someone caught the kid locking lips with the football player.

Max, Ray remembers. The kid’s name was Maxim, but everyone called him Max. Ray wouldn’t have known his name was even Maxim if it weren’t for a sub calling out, “Is Miss Maxim Rutenburg here?” The class _rioted_ , Ray swears, and didn’t let it go for days, but it wasn’t _cruel_ or mean-spirited, just a running joke that might’ve gone on a bit too long. Again, no one gave Max any shit.

But then he and the other boy-- Ray doesn’t remember his name, he’d never met the kid-- were caught, and everything around them froze, like the buzzing of the air right before a storm. Ray thinks of the lightning storms in Florida, how they had so many he didn’t even notice it was odd until Julianne moved down from Mississippi and complained, and thinks the kid’s whole life must’ve been that buzzing: air trembling with anticipation, waiting for a spark to set it off.

He remembers Max’s face when he realized they’d been seen: he’d looked like the lightning finally hit.

Another kid, who had also borne witness (because to them, back then, it really had been a crime) decided he needed to do something, and stepped forward menacingly, but a hand across his chest from his girl stopped him. It wasn’t out of kindness, Ray now realizes, because she looked disturbed; it wasn’t a _stop_ , it was a _wait_. A day passed, _pinko bastard_ was scrawled across a locker, and Ray walked by Max scrubbing it off and averted his eyes.

Three days later, Ray read in the paper that Max had been beaten halfway to Hell behind the Shake Stop around the corner from Ray’s house. The paper didn’t say who’d done it, and no one asked. The Rutenburgs quietly packed up and moved out within the week.

Ray never saw either boy again.

At the time, he hadn’t thought about it. It’d been another fact of life, another thing he’d ignored because it had no relevance to _him_ , but he thinks, now, about his trists with girls in school before he’d met Julie in the tail end of his senior year and feels nauseous, because with a little twist, it could’ve been him behind the Shake Stop. And someday, it could be Roxie.

He decides that if there’s something wrong with that kind of love, God in Heaven can deal with that in His time. For now, Ray thinks it can’t hurt.

 

He’s got another letter from Roxie-- he gets one every month, and he thinks this is the eighth or ninth Klaus has been here for. He finds that’s how he measures the time: every time a letter comes in, he’s got one less letter before he’s out of here. Eighteen down, now, and six to go, and then he won’t have to read the letters anymore, he can just pick up his little girl and hear the words from her himself. He wants that more than anything.

Walt had asked him a few months ago, in his soft, low voice, if he had family back home, and that had turned into hours of them all talking about what they’d left in the states (though Klaus, for once, was silent as the grave, only sometimes adding in as they all gushed over family and friends and their homes). They didn’t get into anything particularly deep, and stayed sweet: Walt told them about his wife, Dave said he had a big old greyhound a friend was watching for him he couldn’t wait to get back to, and the rest waxed poetic about anything from sweethearts to burgers to palm trees to Central Park. And then Klaus had asked after his daughter and said he never got to meet his sister’s, so Ray told them about the letters and within the hour had agreed to share them.

It didn’t really feel like an invasion of privacy like he’d thought it would, because he finds the joy he gets from reading his little girl’s words in his wife’s structured handwriting isn’t something he wants to keep to himself: he’s _proud_ of his girls, and he thinks everyone should know just how wonderful they are; now, a few more people do. Also, Roxie _loves_ that everyone likes her drawings and stories, and Julie tells him (in the letters she sends that he tucks away under his pillow, because the tenderness in her words even on paper _is_ something he wants to hoard and covet and shelter from the harshness of Vietnam) that she talks about Lyle’s comics all week to anyone who will listen, and anything that makes Roxie happy makes Ray happy.

Klaus is very obviously high out of his mind, but has the wherewithal to bluntly give a quick, “ _Fuck_ Barb,” when Ray reads out the part about said child pushing Roxie over, and it makes Dave laugh, staring at him with adoration that Ray doesn’t think either of them are aware of. While the comment bubbles about the group, Ray finds he suddenly and fiercely believes that their love isn’t another kind of love at all, because. Because, he thinks, that was too genuine for it to be anything but God-given.

In that moment, he decides to tell them that he knows, and that he’ll back them up if anyone gives them any shit.

 

He never gets the chance.

  


When the war ends, Ray is at home, watching the news. He’s been back in the States for a few years, now, as a result of an honorable discharge following a crippling gunshot wound to his leg (he doesn’t miss it as much as he thought he would, really), and he feels nothing but relief when the man on the television says the US decided to withdraw troops. He thinks of Dave, shot dead on the field; he thinks of Klaus, declared AWOL by the military and MIA by the soldiers of the 173rd; he thinks of Walt, who never made it back home to his wife; he thinks of Lyle, who he still calls on the weekends, and Bill and Glenn and Kenny and every other soldier that served to the end of the war, and he can’t bring himself to feel like the metaphorical white flag is a personal affront to his missing limb. Roxie has a future here, and that’s all he can care about. Everything else can move on with or without him.

 

Forty-six years later, he’s in the same spot, his teenaged grandkids visiting for the holiday begging him to turn to the news, and he does, with the faux-weariness of old men. _Famed Umbrella Academy Alumni reunite for funeral_ , the headline reads, and his granddaughter gasps. “God, Allison Hargreeves is _so pretty_ ,” she whispers, and her brother groans loudly.

“If I have to read one more thirst tweet about her I will kill myself,” he proclaims. Ray shoots him a look: he may not know what a thirst tweet is, but he does not want anyone threatening suicide under his roof. Properly subdued, the boy mutters an apology, and Roxie walks in with the platter of peanut butter cookies Julie’s been baking in the kitchen, setting them down in the middle of the table.

“Alex, you’re allowed to make fun of your sister when you stop bringing up Deigo’s abs at the dinner table,” she scolds gently, and said sister cackles while Alex turns bright red. Ray laughs as he reaches for a cookie.

The screen flashes to a picture of a group of people dressed in black, all but two holding large, black umbrellas. One seems to be intent on acquiring hypothermia, but the other…

“Julia, dear, who is the young man with the pink umbrella?” he asks her, eyes trained on the screen.

“That’s Klaus!” she chirps, grabbing a cookie for herself. “The Séance! He used to be my _favorite_.”

_Oh_ , Ray realizes, and laughs to himself.

That tricky bastard.

**Author's Note:**

> i had to cut a ton of stuff out because i wanted to get this out tonight and also i didn't want to unload another 9k of bullshit outside of the storyline upon y'all, but knowing me, it will happen  
> some notes on this! the "pinko bastard" note on Max's locker was because in the fun and wild 60s, being gay apparently made you more susceptible to communist propaganda! the haight-ashbury district was in San Francisco and was pretty much the height of the "flower power" movement, and i super encourage you to research it if you want to, but i thought it was fitting, since it was in the summer of '67 and Glenn would've been drafted during that time-- free stores were exactly what the name suggests and were around since garage sales weren't, and i won't get into it because i could go on for a very long time about it and i won't be able to stop. but for real, if you want to find out more, go for it!! it's super interesting  
> as always, im a gremlin and i feed off of feedback, even if it's just "honestly, i've seen better". much much love to everyone reading this fic or even just this end note!!!!!!!! xoxxoxoxoxoxox


End file.
